The Memory Thief
by slytherinish
Summary: There had been a danger in getting too close to him.  He hadn't meant to fall in love with the bastard.


As Draco looked out the window of Grimmauld Place, the last lemon slice of light was sinking beneath the horizon. It had disappeared completely when Harry said it.

"I'm going to tell her about us tomorrow, Draco."

The blond closed his eyes. A muscle jumped in his cheek. He let himself soak in the words for a moment, because he'd been waiting so long to hear them. He deserved this moment. He had waited for it and fought for it so long that he had grown certain it would never come. Love was a kind of madness. It was perhaps the only conclusion he had come to after looking back at the past year, besides the fact that he loved the man he had shared it with. The trouble was that man loved someone else too.

If he had thought about it long enough, he might have thought that it had been a mistake. There had been a danger in getting too close to him. He hadn't meant to fall in love with the bastard.

Now he knew stupid, useless things about him, like how he took his coffee and what section of the newspaper he always read first. It felt entirely too domestic for his liking.

It made him feel mad, perhaps because it made him unselfish… or more so than he had been before, however slightly. He had always reveled in solitude and had needed it to recharge. He could spend endless hours in his own company, reading Hemingway and listening to Sonata No. 8 with a good bottle of wine. He even occasioned to write himself from time to time, though they were cynical pieces that attempted to show the world's crack and flaws that other authors seemed hesitant to reveal, or perhaps even acknowledge.

He loved the quiet evenings in which the night seemed endless. And then he had met Harry again for the first time in ten years on Charring Cross Road where Draco had picked apart his abominable taste in books in front of Blackwell's Bookstore. He'd just picked up a copy of some drivel about politics while Draco had just bought a new copy of George Orwell's _1984_ as his old one had been reduced to rags.

Harry had looked at him with his hair mussed (as usual) and a sloppy smile, and Draco just _knew_ that they'd see each other again. That was how most affairs started: innocently.

Draco had always thought that it had been some kind of foresight on Harry's part, so he could tell Ginny later that "he hadn't meant for it to happen."

The blond turned around finally and looked at his lover with a tightly drawn smile, who was standing in the bedroom where their affair had begun. "Why? So you can have her forgive you sooner rather than later?"

Harry pressed his fingers into his eyes and shook his head. "No, I mean it. I want to be with you. Only you."

"Why should I believe you? Prove it." Draco stared at him relentlessly, his grey eyes cold and impassive. He had steeled himself against believing it because… because he needed to protect himself above everything else. No one had ever died of a broken heart but surely the agony of it was worse than death. He had tasted it once, when Harry had tried to end their affair, claiming that it wasn't fair for Ginny.

_Life isn't fair_, Draco had hissed. It was a mantra he had been repeating to himself over and over ever since he'd been eleven years old, and everyone at school had wet themselves trying to get a glance at the Boy-Who-Lived. No one had looked twice at him.

Except Harry. Draco had always been able to feel his eyes boring into his back between classes and his furtive glances in classes that he'd passed off as suspicion. Perhaps it had been. But now, it was different. Harry loved him.

He thought if he told himself that enough times, then maybe he'd start to believe it.

Harry pushed him into the mattress, his hand between his legs, touching him as though that alone could make Draco believe. He whispered his name above him as Draco mewled and writhed against the sheets. To his shame, he tried to draw him in closer, his face wanton and his gaze adoring. Harry was a selfless lover, had been from the start, as though Draco's pleasure was paramount to his own.

Draco had always found that bizarre, though he had certainly never complained.

"Is this proof Draco?" he asked as he pushed into him. Draco had begged for him to be inside of him too soon, and it hurt the way he liked. Harry was always reluctant to go too fast, but tonight, perhaps he had lost control. Draco _loved_ the idea that he had made him lose his self-restraint, his famed power over his humanity. "Say it's proof," he whispered hotly in his ear. "Tell me who you belong to when I make you come."

It didn't take either of them long and before Draco knew it, he was spilling all over his stomach and Harry's chest. "_Yours,_" he cried breathlessly. "Yours." He felt like sobbing because he knew it was true, and it was that truth that would destroy him. Instead, he raked his fingers through the mess and held them to Harry's lips, his gaze still half-lidded and clouded. Harry took his fingers in his mouth and sucked, and Draco could suddenly swear that he could get hard again if he was given a few more minutes.

Too soon, Harry collapsed on top of him with Draco's name on his lips like a prayer. They didn't talk much when they've finished making love – they never had. Instead, they simply lay tangled in the sheets together, willing the night not to end. The morning always took Harry away from him and delivered him back into the arms of his wife.

Draco had always wanted to hate her, but could never quite manage it properly. Harry, on the other hand, he had always hated and _still_ hated for making him fall in love with him.

They had three children together, Harry and Ginny. Draco had never met him and he certainly didn't want to. He hated children, perhaps because he knew that he had only been produced so his father would have an heir. That was not reason enough for any child to be born, nor was it a reason they should have to live with. Harry's children had been born because they had been wanted desperately so they could be loved and given stupid rubbish at Christmastime. Perhaps to watch them grow too, and other silly notions parents other than his own harbored for their children.

And if Harry told Ginny about him, then that would be all over. No more happy family, no more devoted wife, and no more happy children. Their lives would be ripped apart. Draco's parents hadn't been divorced but he did know what it was like to live in a cold household, with parents who no longer loved each other. Where he felt like an afterthought.

Harry didn't deserve that. He deserved what he had now. The family, the children… everything.

And he was going to throw that all away for Draco.

"You stupid bastard," he whispered to Harry's sleeping form. His eyes were a little wet. "You stupid sod."

It took him hours to summon the courage, until the horizon was pink and yellow. He knew he was out of time.

He took care to remove all signs that he had been in Grimmauld Place at all before reaching for his wand. He simply could not bear to share him with anyone else and could not touch him knowing someone else's hands had been where his were. He loved him too much for that.

And love was a kind of madness.

He knew he had truly gone insane as he raised his wand and pointed it at his lover's prone form on the bed. He wouldn't feel a thing.

"_Obliviate_."

A few minutes later, Draco stepped out onto the street under the morning sun, its light seeping across the sky like watercolor paint. The morning always took Harry away from him, but this time, it would for good.

The man walked away down the sidewalk, his hands shoved in his pockets and his head lowered to the ground until he disappeared into the mist. It was as though he had never been there. Nothing remained of him at all.

Not even a memory.


End file.
